It's been a busy couple of days here in Shenanigan Valley, getting ready for the excavation work on our new house. I already blogged about the easy process of getting the foundation staked on Thursday morning. That afternoon, I met with a sales rep from Spokane Rock Products about delivering gravel to strengthen the culvert over Cable Creek and building up a ramp from the county road to our driveway, bypassing the sentinel pine trees guarding the driveway entrance. Next Wednesday morning, a dump truck and trailer will deliver and spread 24 tons of gravel, half on the culvert (5/8" for those of you deeply into grades of gravel) and half off the county road to the driveway (1 1/4"). But, before the dump truck can do its thing - dumping - Kootenai Electric Cooperative, our service provider, will have to disconnect the power line from the county road to the house, since it hangs right over the length of the driveway, too low for the truck to raise its dump bed. After the dump, they'll reconnect the power, all at no cost. The big cost of providing power to our building site (about $11,400) is a bit further down the process.
This afternoon, our good friend and neighbor Dave Pielaet came over with his old Ford tractor to finish the prep work for the gravel delivery. He hooked a logging chain to the front-end loader and pulled out the old gate posts, from which I'd already chain-sawed the gates. Then, using the rear-mounted blade, he leveled the berm that had built up between the county road and our property from years of road grading, providing a smooth entry way for the gravel truck and, within a couple of weeks, a backhoe and concrete pumper. It's good to have friends with tractors.
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